The Dodgers announced today that three-time World Series champion Maury Wills has passed away. He was 89 years old.
Wills had an incredibly impressive career, spanning 14 different big league seasons. He debuted as a shortstop with the Dodgers in 1959 at the age of 26. He played in 83 games that season and then six more in the World Series, with the Dodgers hoisting the trophy after defeating the White Sox. In 1960, Wills’ got to play a full season for the first time, stealing 50 bases. That was the first of what would eventually wind up as a six-year run as the top basestealer in the National League, with at least 35 in each year of that period and a whopping 104 in 1962. That 104 mark was the modern era single-season MLB record at the time, which stood until Lou Brock swiped 118 in 1974. It wasn’t just the running game that was impressive that year. Wills also batted .299, hit 13 doubles, 10 triples, six long balls and scored 130 runs. He was voted the National League Most Valuable Player that year, just ahead of Willie Mays.
Wills was with the Dodgers through the 1966 season, winning two more titles in 1963 and 1965. He also grabbed Gold Glove awards in 1961 and 1962 and played in seven All-Star games over five seasons, as there were two games in each of 1961 and 1962. He then went on to play two season for the Pirates, before being selected in the expansion draft for the newly-formed Montreal Expos. He was traded back to the Dodgers in June of 1969 and stuck with them through the end of the 1972 season.
After his playing days were over, Wills spent some time as a broadcaster before trying his hand as a manager. He was hired to manage the Mariners partway through the 1980 season, though his time as skipper was not very successful and ultimately brief. The M’s went 20-38 over the remainder of the 1980 campaign and then started 6-18 in 1981. He was fired at that point and wasn’t given another shot in the dugout, leaving him with a managerial record of 26-56.
Ultimately, Wills will surely be remembered for his incredible base stealing prowess. Across 1,942 career games, he stole 586 bases, a mark that puts him 20th on the all-time list of basestealers. He also scored 1,067 runs and notched 2,134 hits, including 177 doubles, 71 triples and 20 home runs. He earned three World Series rings, seven All-Star appearances, two Gold Glove awards and an MVP award. MLBTR sends our condolences to his family, friends and loved ones.
A great player in his day… Man could he swipe a base and run!
Absolutely. Brock is waiting for him upstairs. Can’t think of one without the other.
Absolutely one of the most exciting players back in the day. I loved watching him swipe the bags.
The great one of the greatest Montréal Expos that ever lived
Great player and player. Always think of a better fielding Juan Pierre.
Great person
Juan Pierre was a LFer and Maury Wills was a SS.
Yes that is another good difference in addition to their name. My point was merely output.
Then maybe compare him to another fellow speedy SS like Luis Aparicio instead of a player that plays a completely different position on the field when you mention “better fielding.”
Juan Pierre was a good defensive CF. Maybe you’re thinking of speedster Ralph Garr who wasn’t the very good defensive LF.
Try again. Pierre never won a gold glove or even got into voting for one. He had no arm.
A very underrated player. RIP
R I P Mr. Wills.
An excellent ball player for his day. Exciting to watch.
Wills set the original record for most stolen bases in a season with 104, and was an integral part of the Dodgers 3 World series championships
He never hit for power but his presence on the field, in the batters box and in the locker room were major contributions to baseball
RIP.
As a kid, I was told that I was at a Spokane Indians game where Wills was doing a rehab assignment.
Rest In Peace Maury. You were an exciting player.
An exciting player on some successful Dodger teams in the 60’s ! R.I.P. Maury !
One of the greats. Never elected to the HoF, sadly.
He started his MLB career at age 26 and declined pretty rapidly once he hit his mid 30’s like most speed based and slight of build players do. His prime wasn’t that long nor was his career and didn’t have career type numbers.
While he led the league in stolen bases a number of times, he also led the league in number of times caught, and as he aged the percentage of times being caught kept rising. How you win a gold glove making 30-40 errors is beyond me. Maybe that was par for the course back in the 60’s as this was before my time.
He was a slap-hitter who drove pitchers nuts when he got on base, and he did it for many years as well as anybody who played the game in his time. His style of play is completely unappreciated today.
It is not unappreciated, it is outdated by current analytics. The risk of creating an out when you are already on base is too great and may take the bat out of another hitter’s hands. Guys like Wills who would steal 40-50 but get caught 20+ times is what the game passed by.
He also didn’t walk, which didn’t help his OBP.
You say it isn’t unappreciated and then you under-appreciate it. Uh, okay.
I love the stolen base. I merely presented to you that it is merely out of date as baseball evolved. There was a time when the HR was frowned upon and you bunted. Don’t confuse the two concepts, they don’t mean the same thing.
Who frowned upon Home Runs?
The entirety of baseball for around 50 years of it being a thing. Ty Cobb said that any idiot could hit a home run. The manager of the Red Sox in the year before Babe Ruth was traded apologize for him hitting so many home runs and said that he would concentrate on getting more hits instead of home runs. The belief back then was that a single, double, or a triple was much more valuable overall than a home run.
Ty Cobb was definitely an expert when it came to idiocy.
Amazing ballplayer though.
Every pitcher from the beginning of time?
Wills wasn’t playing in the analytics era. They played a different game then.
He might have been an insufferable jerk, but the guy knew baseball. You can thank him for a lot of the way the game was played in several eras past his time.
That’s my point, genius. It is a different ball game now. It doesn’t mean what he did is under appreciated.
Yeah those were the days, I get chicks dig the long ball but everybody loves SPEED!!!
That’s your narrow opinion. There’s no sense in debating dry cement.
We should hope someone like Al Stump doesn’t write our eulogy.
While we are merely pointing things out, I am merely pointing out to you that Wills is widely credited for reinventing the running game. The reason he isn’t in the HoF isn’t due to a lack of on-field accomplishments, it’s the result of his problems off the field.
The running game wasn’t out of vogue during his days. I pointed out a contemporary of his that played nearly in the same era (late 50’s to early 70’s for Aparicio) and stole 40-50 bases a year. Lou Brock was also another speed demon. The running game fell out of favor in the 2000’s during the juiced ball era and after Rickey Henderson.
He’s not in the HOF because his career numbers don’t stack up.
No, that’s called facts. I am not sorry if you don’t agree with them.
You’re just ignoring what I said, again, the main one being that the HoF criteria are about a lot of things, none of them, numbers. Quite a bit has been written about Wills’ contributions to the game and why he was snubbed by the HoF. Here’s one.
latimes.com/sports/dodgers/story/2022-09-20/maury-…
“He brought speed to the game, and that speed fueled the Dodgers dynasty in the early 1960s,” Dodgers historian Mark Langill said. “Instead of the power of those final years in Brooklyn, this new Los Angeles team won with pitching, defense and speed … and Maury was that speed.”
Yes, he impacted his team, not the entirety of the game itself. Pitching, speed, and defense wasn’t a foreign concept back then, it was exactly how the Baltimore Orioles won their world series. A lot of teams had their own speed demons in the day. The HOF is certainly about numbers and especially how you stack compared to your counterparts in your era. Mills was speedy for sure. At times he hit for a good average, but not all the time. He had absolutely no power. He didn’t walk, and he got caught stealing an awful lot, too. Sure, he might have added to the team in scoring runs when he stole a base. But, how many potential runs did he cost the team by getting thrown out, which happened for him around 25-30% of the time on average. While he did win gold gloves (some how) he made tons and tons of errors.
He was a very good player in a short spurt of time. Not an all time greatest player ever.
Those were beautiful words for the man! brought a tear to my eye.
I would love for something like that to be on my tombstone:
“He was an insufferable jerk, but he knew…”
Where do you get that he was an “insufferable jerk”? He had substance abuse problems for many years, but once he cleaned up he became a valuable advisor to the Dodgers. Dave Roberts in particular loved the guy, and credited him with making his career. That’s why he wears Wills’ number now.
We’re talking about Ty Cobb here, try to keep up.
The man just died ..he was a very great player in his time. ..why go into negatives
Which is exactly what I said. People decided to bring up a “snub” of the Hall of Fame for him and that’s where I have to point out “facts” and if they happen to be negative in your opinion, then so be it. The facts are what they are.
Not a superstar when you look at OPS+, where he sat about 10 points below average but his oWAR/dWAR were both positive for the majority of his career (only 2 seasons where they weren’t both positive). Doesn’t have the numbers for HOF but for the most part, a decent player for the time he did play.
Sad that he passed away.
Sadly there’s many players in the HOF that are undeserving
The HoF is not about numbers.
OWAR is heavily weighted for playing the position of SS.
Sad to hear of his passing, at least he was a part of that team before they became known as Los Karens in 2017 and beyond.
Has it ever occurred to you that you are insulting 10’s of thousands of women every time you casually and insultingly use their name that way? Of course you don’t, And most of those women are ten times the person you will ever be, and you telegraph that by picking Rocker as your name. Maybe you could dial it back and drop the offensive use of Karen.
Some people invent to ways to take offense.
Okay Darren.
Probably a lot of little girls named “Karen” getting picked on and bullied these days. Not cool.
The 3rd Dodger legend to pass away this year. Rest in peace, Maury.
my first favorite player when i was a kid
RIP
My sincere condolences to his family, including his Dodger family. May he rest in peace.
RIP Maury!
In addition to being a legendary basestealer and career .281 hitter, he went 10 consecutive years with 600+ ABs. One season he played in 165 regular season games somehow. And he had 759 plate appearances. So, despite all that running, he was durable too. RIP Mr. Wills.
3 game playoff back then when teams were tied at the end of the regular season.
She was a beautiful women who was probably the best owner the Dodgers had. My condolens to her family.
huh?
Made you look.
Base Stealing is such a lost art in the game today and Maury was one of the best. Wills also proved Managing a Major League ball club is much, much harder than it looks.
R.I.P. Maury
It isn’t a lost art, it just isn’t how the game is played in this era. Being on base is viewed as the most valuable thing. A stolen base is not a 100% outcome, and MLB as a whole has said that the risk of losing that runner on base is not worth the risk of losing them only to advance one base.
It is the same reason why the sacrifice bunt and bunting in general isn’t done anymore. Because the out is viewed as too valuable to just give away like that.
At one point and time the Home Run was viewed negatively and unsportsmanlike.
Maury was The Man! His 1970’s VHS tapes taught me how to run the bases hard and efficiently (and steal them) at a wee age and his wisdom always stuck with me.
What a great player with no respect!! Even after making the opening day roster for two seasons he was asked to stay with the minor leaguers in spring training at vero Beach. Had to prove himself over and over.
1962 MVP season : .299BA .347OBP 208H 130R lead league with 10 triples and 104 SB which was a record while playing GG SS. 99 OPS+!!! LOL modern day numbers are pretty lame if they thought he was better than Willie that year! Obviously was pretty darn good. But yet we say he was Freddy Glavis with that ops+ lol
It’s not called the “Best Stats Award” or the “Highest WAR Award”, its called the Most Valuable Player. What he did that year in stealing 104 bases was disrupt the game. From 1930-1961 the annual league leaders totals ranged from 17-40 SB’s. Maury was a weapon the NL was not ready for. Tommy Davis, Willie Davis and `Frank Howard thrived in the heart of that batting order because of what Maury was doing to opposing Pitchers and Catchers. Value, not accumulated stats.
Bet it was fun to watch.. much luke Ricky. My point is he wouldn’t have won the award today by modern day stats. I’m pretty he may just be the only mvp with an ops+ of less than a 100. Juan Soto has a 134+ since joining the Padres. He’s been hitting in the .230s
What is a player’s value based upon? The stats they put up. Back in Mills’ day, they didn’t have stats like WAR and OPS. They had raw numbers.
Maury took losing hard. He cried when he lost in The Superstars.
My Dad used to tell me stories of playing Little League with Maury’s son Bump in Spokane. Condolences to the family.
God willing bump and his dad reconciled. Its my understanding bump resentment towards pops for burdening him with the brutal name, Bump will wills caused the riff.
Bump’s real name is Elliott. There are a couple of different stories about how he got the nickname “Bump”, one of which came from his mother.
Shouldn’t have won the ’62 NL MVP over Mays. Worst vote ever.
So much for being the Bright Side
Eh, hindsight is 20/20. Of course, looking back at it, it was a much different Era. Slugging percentage wouldn’t come out for another 10 years, meaning that OPS wasn’t a thing yet either. OPS+, wRC+, and wOBA, three of the best, most modern comparative stats of course wouldn’t come around for a handful more decades later. The most advanced public Stat available at the time was OBP.
Wampum was right.Wills was so disruptive that he affected every pitcher when he got on base.This helped every subsequent batter.
And there is no statistic for that.
It helped to change how the game was played.
The MVP voters got it right on this one.
I still remember Maury in his 2 years with the Pirates and was really bummed that the Expos took him in the expansion draft. RIP Maury. Prayers for strength and eventual peace for your familiy.
RIP, Maury. Dated Doris Day and appeared in an episode of the NBC series “Hank”. An all-around guy.
What a player! And interesting he spent 8 years in the minors before getting his first shot in the big leagues.
Well played sir time to rest
RIP small ball
Rest in peace Maury..I remember you playing with the pirates in 1967anf 1968. Very underated
as mlbtr writers write, maury will still be 89 next year